Raise Your Weapon
by sarsaparillia
Summary: The Rebellion didn't start with a bang, but with a whisper. — Anakin/Padmé, Leia, Han, Luke.
1. embedded in the frost

**disclaimer**: disclaimed.  
**dedication**: to Torie. happy Christmas, baby.  
**notes**: SO THERE WAS ANOTHER PICTURE…  
**notes2**: I'm fucking with the mythos _so hard you don't even know_

**chapter title**: embedded in the frost  
**summary**: The Rebellion didn't start with a bang, but with a whisper. — Anakin/Padmé, Leia, Han, Luke.

—

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The Rebellion didn't start with a bang, but with a whisper.

It started, in fact, with a marriage, and then later with the birth of a pair of twins. It started with a secret confession in the middle of the night to a Master from a broken man who didn't know what to do. It started with the night sky changing, when the resonant frequency of Coruscant's nightlife settled in just before the sun rose, in the closest thing to silence that ever overcame the planet.

It started, ironically, with Anakin Skywalker sitting with his head bowed in front of Master Obi-Wan Kenobi, and murmuring his secret shame.

"Master," Anakin said, "I think Senator Palpatine is Darth Sidious."

Things moved very quickly, after that.

—

Padmé refused to leave the Senate.

"We have to go," Anakin said into her shoulder, shaking in the limbs. She was a firm thing with a child on each hip, an anchor in the sea of uncertainty that the world had become in a few scant hours.

"I can't," she said. "Palpatine is going to declare himself Emperor."

"You're not safe here," he said, desperate, choking up in the throat. He thought back to the birth of the twins; her screaming pain and then her golden silence as she held their children—Luke and Leia, Leia and Luke—quiet now, and innocent. They would face a brave new world, but not one where it was easy to be different.

The Clone Wars had been cruel, but Palpatine's plans were far, far more sinister.

And already, Anakin could feel the Force swirling around his children. It was stronger in Leia than Luke, but the Force always had manifested in girls earlier than boys. Likely, they would be of equal power, two sides of the same coin. He hadn't thought he could love anymore more than he loved Padmé, but he loved his children so much he thought his heart might burst with it.

"What are we going to _do_?"

Padmé slid out of the curve of his arms. She moved slow, soft steps across the floor to the white ornate cradles for each of the twins—Master Yoda's gift, his grave green face lined older than his nine hundred years. Anakin watched her, watched the way her fingers lingered on their downy dark hair.

"_I_," she said, "am going to stay here. _You_ are going to take the children, and teach them what they need to know. I know you feel their power, Annie, I see it every time you look at them."

"I can't leave you," he said, and that was true.

"I don't think you have a choice," Padmé said. "You can't stay here. Palpatine will know that you've betrayed him, Annie."

"He'll kill you," Anakin said.

(He still dreamt of her death, all the time. Every night. Every second he closed his eyes. But his wife was strong, and there was nothing in the universe that could stop her once she'd set her mind to something. He ought to have known that, by now.)

"No, I don't think he will," she said slowly. "I have too much influence on Nabooine politics—my death would cause a ripple effect that I don't think he wants to deal with just yet. It's better than I stay here."

She paused for just a second, her dark eyes intent on his face as her hands came up to cup his chin. "But you, my love, you're his wild card. You're the unknown."

"I don't like where you're going with this," Anakin said flatly, mouth a thin white line.

"Take the children and go," Padmé said. "And don't come back. Not for anything."

"No."

"I don't like it any more than you do, Annie, but it's the only way we'll all _survive_."

Anakin reached for her again, tugged her close 'til they were chest to chest. She was a small soft thing in voluminous white robes that made her eyes into deep fathomless wells and she pressed her face into the side of his neck.

"I love you," he whispered. "I loved you from the second I first saw you."

She chuckled mirthlessly, a tiny hiccup caught in her throat. "We wasted a lot of time, didn't we?"

"Ten years," Anakin snorted.

They were quiet, for a little while, as they clung to one another.

"Take care of them, Anakin," Padmé whispered into his shoulder. "Please. I need to know that you'll be alright."

"I can't leave you alone," he said again. The desperation had settled in his gut, seething like a living breathing thing. It was acid, sloshing behind his eyes and bubbling through his veins.

But Gods above, if she was stubborn and beautifully fierce, he wouldn't have loved her so much.

"You already said that. Repeating it doesn't make it any more likely to happen," she laughed softly.

"Keep one of them," he said. "Padmé, please, think about it. They knew you were pregnant—they had to know, they had to—"

"I can't—how could I do that to a child? Here? In this place?"

"You wouldn't be alone," Anakin said very softly, and something inside Padmé very gentle crumbled away like a leaf on the wind in autumn.

"Oh, Annie," she murmured. She threaded their fingers together, skin and bone and skin and bone and skin and bone and metal, the warmth of the nerves sore and sick beneath their combined grip. "Oh, _Annie_."

"I wish you wouldn't call me that," he muttered, but it was an old argument, one that lacked vitriol or any sort of real conviction behind it. It was her nickname, and no one else had the right to use it.

She closed her eyes for a second longer than a standard blink. "You're serious, though, about splitting them up."

"Yes," Anakin said. "They would be—"

"—Safer apart. I know." She didn't comment on his need for safety, but she understood. There was only so much a person could lose before they simply couldn't lose any more or they'd lose _themselves_.

And that was the last thing she wanted for him.

The very last.

Again she closed her eyes. "Take Leia, then."

_Make her dangerous_, she didn't say. _Make her the scourge of the universe, make her violent and strong and unstoppable. Make her beautiful and powerful and unafraid_.

"When do I leave?" Anakin asked, resigned.

Padmé's lips scalpled up into a sad caricature of a smile.

"As soon as the sun rises," she said.

"Padmé—"

"Come to bed, Anakin," she said. "And show me you love me."

—

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_tbc_.

**notes3**: I'm sorry I can't write anything happy. I really am.


	2. time is a dissonance

**disclaimer**: disclaimed.  
**dedication**: to Torie, for Christmas. part deux!  
**notes**: i want to die ok ok

**chapter title**: time is a dissonance  
**summary**: The Rebellion didn't start with a bang, but with a whisper. — Anakin/Padmé, Leia, Han, Luke.

—

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Leia Skywalker threw down her wrench in frustration.

"This droid is _useless_! I can't get anything out of him, the file's corrupted—!"

"Leia, calm down, getting angry won't help anyone."

Leia looked up at her father, frowning intensely. Anakin Skywalker stood with his hands folded in his robes, mouth twitching the way it always did when he was amused and trying not to show it.

"Yeah, and you still need a haircut. Getting angry makes me _feel_ better."

"I know it does," he said, and knelt down beside her. "I've told you the story before—"

Leia rolled her eyes and cut him off. "Yeah, yeah, that time you nearly Fell but didn't because mom was the coolest person in the whole entire world and your love saved the _universe_, blah, blah, blah. I know. You've told me that story so many times I could probably recite it word for word."

"It's an important story," Anakin said quietly. "Here, let me try. I built this droid—his name's R2."

"You build a lot of droids, Daddy," Leia said, but she handed the wrench over, and let her father work his magic.

Leia hadn't inherited the ability to manipulate the Force. When she'd been born, her father had said the Force had been strong with both her and her brother, but she'd never had the ability to make objects move the way he could. She'd inherited the ability to pilot anything she touched, to shoot and never miss, and the dubious ability to build droids and understand their innards no matter _what_ was happening around her.

This particular droid, though, was being a little _bitch_.

Her father was different, though. Her father had a way with machines (which was maybe due in part to being part machine himself; the prosthetics these days were flawless, but he still always wore a glove), and he murmured and touched and finally—_finally_—the droid responded.

The holocron _was_ corrupted, flickering a little for a moment before solidifying into a boy. He was in Nabooine dress, Leia thought—sand-coloured hair and maybe-blue eyes, the holocron was corrupted after all—and he looked desperate, biting at his lips and flinching. He couldn't have been much older than she was, scrawny but beginning to stretch. Eleven, maybe twelve. There was something about him that pulled at her—

_Help me. They have my mother. Help me, Master Skywalker, please_.

The holocron flickered again, died, and then started again.

_Help me. They have my mother. Help me, Master Skywalker, please_.

And again.

_Help me. They have my mother. Help me, Master Skywalker, please_.

And again.

_Help me. They have my mother. Help me, Master Skywalker, please_.

Her father's face had gone white, lips pressed together in a very thin line as his fists clenched. Leia touched his shoulder, very gently, very carefully. Her father's anger had always been a wild thing, tamed only by his own careful meditation and a long-honed iron fist on his emotions. At her touch, though, he slumped backwards, the tension and the anger draining away.

"Daddy?" she asked. "Are you… okay?"

He sighed, and closed his eyes. "Well, I always knew this would happen eventually, your mother never could keep her mouth shut."

"Who _was_ that?" Leia asked. "I feel like…"

"_That_," her father said, eyes still closed, "was your brother. And _I_," he paused again, this time to open his eyes and stare her straight in the face, "am going to go fix whatever it is that your mother's gotten herself into _this_ time."

"So when do we leave?" Leia asked.

She'd known about her brother her entire life. A twin, her father had a said, a boy called Luke.

Anakin stared at his daughter. "You're going to stay here, with your Aunt and Uncle, where I know you won't get into trouble."

"…You're kidding, right," Leia said, flatly.

Her father eyed her for a moment, before he realized that this was going to go absolutely nowhere good. He pinched the bridge of his nose, probably to ward off the oncoming headache that Leia knew she caused him on a fairly-regular basis. He deserved it anyway, he never let her do _anything_ fun.

"You are too much like your mother," he sighed. "Fine. Start packing. We leave at dawn. It's about time you started participating, anyway. Bring you gun, Leia, this could be… dangerous."

Leia made a high-pitched sound of victory in the back of her throat, threw her arms around her father's neck, and then scampered off as fast as she could to the little room where she kept her belongings.

Anakin watched her go, heart in his throat.

Padmé had wanted her daughter to be fierce and fiery and free, and Leia was all those things. She had no affinity for the Force, and perhaps that was for the best—Anakin knew that he was not a good teacher. He thought of Ahsoka, her fury at the end of it all, and winced.

Leia was easier, in a way—she didn't expect anything of him at all except to be her father, long-haired and goofy and thoroughly odd about anything concerning the past. She'd expected that he taught her what he knew, and he expected that no matter what, she would always want her own way. She was a firecracker, Leia Skywalker, and he loved her quite desperately.

If the boy in the holocron was his son—and there was so little doubt in Anakin's mind that that was Luke; the boy was a mirror of himself at that age, down to the shaggy light hair—then Padmé was in trouble. Anakin had sworn on the Force, his life, his _mother's grave_ that he wouldn't return to her unless it absolutely necessary.

This looked to be _absolutely necessary_.

Padmé Amidala could not die.

And if that meant that Anakin Skywalker brought his daughter to one of the most dangerous planets in Empire, then that was what it meant. The Rebellion, bless them, would think he was going in to gather intel, to perhaps destroy the Empire from the inside out.

But Anakin, despite everything, was selfish. He'd long come to terms with it—the greater good would always pale in comparison to his family, to his immediate needs. The Force curled around him, it's neutrality in his hands a simple easy thing. He'd started the Rebellion in the first place because he'd wanted to be with Padmé.

It was always about her, in the end.

(The destruction of the Jedi order hadn't been in the plans, though. The loss of so much life had torn through the Force like a gaping open wound—the death of the children had been the most painful thing he'd ever felt. Anakin thought again of Ahsoka, and hated himself intensely.)

The Order was as dead as the Masters he'd trained under, save for Obi-Wan. His Master was old, now, and tired—Anakin was the last of a dying breed. He was probably going to die in the pursuit of saving one of three women he'd ever loved.

And he wasn't going to mind at all.

—

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_tbc_.


	3. kill the switch

**disclaimer**: disclaimed.  
**dedication**: still to Torie. LOOK WHAT YOU'VE DONE TO ME.  
**notes**: sixteen year old punk-ass Han Solo is my favourite Han Solo

**chapter title**: kill the switch  
**summary**: The Rebellion didn't start with a bang, but with a whisper. — Anakin/Padmé, Leia, Han, Luke.

—

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Tatooine was a dry, dusty red planet that Leia was in love with. It was wild thing, shifting dunes and sandstorms that lasted for days. There was always grit in her teeth and beneath her nails, and she'd used the parasitic mynocks as target practice from a young age. The air sucked the moisture from everything, but it was home, and Leia was in love with it entirely.

But she wasn't in love with Mos Eisley.

She wasn't in love with it at all.

It was dirty, smelly, squalid. Her father walked at ease here, though—this was the city of his youth. The shop owners hawked their wears in loud raucous voices, looked her over unseeingly because she wore the white wrap clothes of the moisture miners. Her Aunt and Uncle had been sorry to see them go—Grandda Ben, too, had given them a stern talking to before they left.

But Leia had gripped her father's hand tight, and held on. She was eleven. She wanted adventure, and she wanted blood.

The spaceport was _crawling_ with Storm Troopers, their white helmets shiny underneath the twin suns. Leia eyed them warily—she knew what the Clones had done, knew the horror stories of that long, unending war.

Anakin Skywalker walked past them like they weren't even there, hands tucked deep into his robes and a swagger in his step.

Leia Skywalker gathered her courage, and followed him with her chin up.

(Her father was a huge dork, and she would never tell anyone anything different.)

She wasn't expecting a massive body to slam into hers, though. That was an unpleasant surprise. It sent her sprawling into the dirt, dust billowing around her as she fell but Leia rolled, tucking up into herself the way she'd been taught hand already reaching down to the blaster at her hip. She nearly pulled the trigger, too, blindly, without looking, but then her father was there.

That was good.

Leia never missed, and she wasn't quite prepared to take a sentient life. Mynocks were one thing, but they were parasites—they destroyed livelihoods, made ships unstable and dangerous for pilots. Killing another person wasn't something that she'd ever wanted to do.

Anakin scooped her up from the ground, and turned to glare at the person who'd sent her flying.

It was a boy, maybe sixteen, with dark hair and dark eyes, and he was _glowering_ like the sky was about to fall down on his head. "Watch where you're going, kid!"

"You bumped into me!" Leia half-shouted from beneath her father's arms. "Stupid, you're huge and I could have got hurt! I could have hurt _you_!"

He sneered at her, lips pulling away from his teeth and making the shadows beneath look deeper and darker than they should have been. He was hollow, somehow, scrawny and underfed with a burning in his gaze that looked to consume the universe. His clothing was too ragged to have come from a family that cared about him. And there were chafe marks around his neck.

Tatooine was a slave planet, and Leia knew slave marks when she saw them.

She looked at her father, and saw that he was seeing exactly what she was seeing. He had that stupid grin on his face, the one that always warned that he was about to do something that was going to embarrass everyone involved.

Leia wanted to find a wall to bang her head against.

She was going to be stuck with this big stupid brute, because her father had a _conscience_ that liked to show itself at the most inopportune moments. Like _right now_, obviously. He set her down, dusted her off (pulled her hand off her blaster when no one was looking), and looked at the boy.

"When was the last time you ate?" her father asked him.

"What do _you_ care?"

"You knocked my daughter over, the least you could do is answer a question," Anakin said. He was doing the lip-twitching-amused thing again, and Leia rolled her eyes. The boy eyed them warily, and the crowd that was starting to gather around them—Mos Eisley was the kind of spaceport where nothing stayed quiet for long. Gossip was a disease, and this place was retching with it.

"Yesterday," the boy said.

Anakin snorted. "Kid, you're a terrible liar. C'mon, let's go get something to drink."

Leia watched her father raise a hand, waved it easily, and said "Nothing to see here, folks," like he hadn't just dispersed what could have easily become a riot with Force-suggestion. It was times like this that Leia remembered that her father had been a Jedi, once—that though the Order had been destroyed, he still knew more than anyone else in maybe the entire galaxy except for maybe Grandda Ben. The crowd disappeared back into an ordinary street, and it was like nothing had happened at all.

(Mos Eisley was famous for its riots. There was a _reason_ only smugglers and criminals came to Tatooine.)

Her father cuffed the boy around the neck. "You need to eat," he told the boy seriously, "and an apology probably wouldn't hurt, either. Leia, you too."

"But I didn't even _do_ anything!" Leia said, with all the affronted dignity an eleven-year-old could manage.

"_Apologize_, Leia," Anakin said sternly.

She folded her arms, and glared through slit eyes. "I'm sorry that you're ugly and mean and—and—_ugly_!"

"Yeah, well, I'm sorry you're so _short_ that I couldn't even _see_ you!" the boy retorted. "You're just a _kid_!"

"I'm _Leia Skywalker_! Do you even—_ugh_, _Daddy_!"

For a minute, her father looked between the two of them, and then burst into laughter. For that moment, he just stood there, laughing so hard he would have given the audience at the underground comedy clubs a run for their credits, but after a minute, he stopped, and just shook his head.

"Come on, kiddies," he said. "Let's get some food into you, and then we can figure this whole thing out.

They hauled the hell out of there, into a dingy little bar that had an unpronounceable name and an even less pronounceable menu. Leia squinted at it for a minute in the dim lighting, and promptly gave up. Her father had already gone to find them some food.

This had, however, left Leia alone with the boy and his wild, hungry eyes.

Leia was so unimpressed.

The boy's name turned out to be Han Solo, and he was a _total punk_.

Leia was actually _so_ _unimpressed_ that she might have actually circled all the way back 'round to impressed at his sheer _stupidity_. He sat slouched back, hands stuffed into the pockets of his ragged tunic pockets.

She kicked him underneath the tabletop, boot jamming hard into his shin.

He swore delightfully loudly, and people turned to stare.

Leia almost couldn't contain her glee.

Regardless, they glared at each other across the table until Anakin came back with a plate or three piled high with some indistinguishable-coloured food that smelled like everything good in the world—savoury meat and thick slices of bread. He dropped the plates in front of Leia and the boy, nodded once, and sat back to watch the kids fall on the food like they'd never seen anything edible before in their lives.

Han ate fast, too fast, gorging like he wasn't sure where his next meal was coming from. His gaze shifted between Leia and the rest of the room and Anakin himself, never straying from the food in front of him for too long.

"So," Anakin said, "how long did it take you to escape?"

The boy stiffened, nearly dropped his fork.

"I'm not gonna turn you in, kid," Anakin said quietly. "Don't worry about that. I've been there, I'm not about to make anyone go back."

"Then what d'you want?" the kid asked, suddenly very aware of Leia's sharp dark eyes on his face. She watched him like a predator, like a killer, and she was only eleven. She was only eleven. He had to remind himself of that twice, even as he watched her slice her meat into tiny pieces efficiently with quick, precise slices of her knife.

"Do you know where we can get a transport ship? We're looking to get off-planet, soon as possible," Leia's father said.

The boy was quiet for a moment. "I know where you can _win_ one."

"Win?" Anakin asked.

"Sabacc," Han said quietly. "They play for—"

"What's sah-back?" Leia asked before her father could say anything else. The word tasted strange on her tongue, a foreign wetness that was scented faintly of green grass and clear water; Corellian, maybe.

"It's a card game," Han sneered. "Don't you know _anything_?"

She kicked him under the table, her boot connecting solidly with his shin. He didn't hiss, though a muscle did twitch in his jaw in pain, and Leia sat back, satisfied.

"Corellian," her father said slowly. "Usually high-stakes."

"The prize is a ship. The _Millennium Falcon_," Han said, a kind of soft awe in his voice. "Smugglers talk about it."

Leia didn't want to know what this stupid boy knew about smugglers, but she was interested in the ship—the two of them alone could probably pilot it without too much trouble—though she didn't want to know what he wanted for getting them into the game. The other problem, of course, was the game itself. High-stakes, on Tatooine, usually meant slavery.

"Do you know how to play?" her father asked him.

"Better than anyone," Han said fiercely. "I used to—"

He went silent, eyes haunted and lips tightening, and her father reached over to clap him on the shoulder. "Can you win us that ship?"

"If I lose—"

"You won't," Anakin said firmly. "And if you do, well, I'll take care of it."

Han Solo's dark eyes met Leia's across the table. "One condition," he said.

"Yeah?"

"I come with you."

Anakin grinned at last. "You're gonna fit in just _fine_, kid. Win that ship, and it's yours to keep as long as we get off of this planet soon as we can. We have some people to save. First, though, we should probably get you some decent clothes."

The boy set his jaw. "Let's just go."

Leia rolled her eyes heavenward.

_Boys_.

She should really just have done the talking herself. Her father was too kind, and one day, it was probably going to get them all in trouble.

But for now, they had another ally.

Leia drew a dusty breath of air in through her nose, and got up from the table.

—

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_tbc_.


	4. midnight juggernauts

**disclaimer**: disclaimed.  
**dedication**: still to Torie. also to V, because I should really be writing her present and I'm not oooOOPs  
**notes**: barfs.

**chapter title**: midnight juggernauts  
**summary**: The Rebellion didn't start with a bang, but with a whisper. — Anakin/Padmé, Leia, Han, Luke.

—

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Leia pressed her nose to the reinforced glass of the Millenium Falcon's hull, eyes wide.

She'd never been in space before, except when she'd been a baby, and her father had escaped Coruscant with her tucked into his travelling cloak, and she had no memory of that at all. She didn't have any memory of her mother, either, except for a very soft lullaby that sometimes played in her dreams.

It turned out that space was an empty dark thing, a vacuum of nothingness except for millions and millions of stars and far-away planets. It was black outside all the time, a void of light and heat, but nothing to impair a person's vision for a hundred thousand light years in any direction.

And it was _amazing_.

If she'd loved Tatooine, Leia had no words to describe how she felt about space. It filled an empty hole in her chest that she didn't even know had been there.

Her father sat in the pilot's seat, eyes trained on something far in the distance that Leia couldn't see—he was seeing through the Force, which had always made him a better pilot than anyone else Leia had ever let (except herself, because she was a better pilot than her father had ever been, which they both readily acknowledged).

But Leia wasn't sitting in the co-pilot's seat.

That _stupid boy_ was.

Rationally, Leia understood that this was technically his ship now—Sabacc turned out to be the most ridiculous game Leia had ever seen, as it was entirely pointless—but that didn't mean that _she_ didn't have the right to sit next to her father while they shot through the universe faster than the speed of light. Han needed to learn how to pilot the thing, because as far as either Leia or Anakin could tell, he'd never touched any kind of ship controls in his life.

Just because she _understood_ it didn't mean she had to _like_ it.

Leia hopped out of the hastily-built passenger seat. "I'm going for a walk," she told her father, and he nodded without looking at her. He knew she could look after herself.

She was out of the door before the stupid-head could say anything rude.

The Millennium Falcon had once been a lightweight freighter ship, but over time had been converted to a sophisticated smuggler's ship—there were interesting nooks and crannies everywhere, and Leia wanted to explore them all. She swung herself up into the hull, fingers scrabbling against warm metal as she wormed her way through a tiny crack in the wall that looked like it led somewhere little girls shouldn't be going.

Obviously, Leia was going there.

It was dark in the little crack, and again, Leia cursed her inability to manipulate the Force. A little light would have been helpful—

A sharp unearthly screech had her whipping her blaster out, and aiming above her.

The mynock fell dead at her feet, and she hissed.

"Mynocks, are you even kidding me? Of all things, _mynocks_—I need to—" she muttered under her breath to herself as she turned on the flat heel of her boot and slid back out of the smuggler's hideaway.

"You," she said, ten minutes later and a little out of breath, "are coming with me."

"_What_? I'm not going anywhere with you, you little bi—"

"_Language_," her father said. "Leia, what is it?"

"Mynocks. I killed one in the hull," she said delicately. She held up the dead mynock as proof. Its scraggy wings hung limply, brown and somehow a glossy dullness. "See?"

Her father slapped a hand to his face. "Kid, go with Leia. I can take care of piloting this thing myself for a while."

What he didn't say was that as they obviously _did_ have mynocks, it was dangerous to rely on the autopilot. Leia pushed her bangs out of her eyes, and glared at the Stupid Big Thing. He glowered at her, but pushed out of his chair.

"Oh," her father said, almost an afterthought. "Kid, you might want this."

A blaster flashed through the air. Han caught it, instinct probably, and stared down at it warily.

"Mynocks bite," Anakin grinned. "Now go on, have fun."

"C'mon," Leia said, rolling her eyes. "Let's go kill some things.

"How does this even work?" Han was holding the blaster away from himself, gawky-large still-growing hands light on the slick metal.

"Just point and shoot, stupid, it's not that hard," Leia said, deadpan, and pulled him from the cockpit without further ado.

—

Their pile of dead mynocks was frightfully large, and getting larger by the minute. There had been a nest in one of the circuit boards, and apparently the entire Millenium Falcon was infested with them—probably it had happened on Tatooine, before they'd left. The little buggers were harder to eradicate than cockroaches.

"You're not a bad shot," Han said, grudgingly.

"You're not bad at giving compliments, either," Leia replied.

"I'm trying to be _nice_," he said.

"You're a _scoundrel_," Leia told him, and then she kicked him in the shin for the second time that hour.

"Would you _quit_ that?!"

"No," she told him frankly. "Think we got them all?"

He squinted down at their pile of dead mynocks. "I hope so. You don't mind the—"

"No," Leia said with a shrug. "They're non-sentient."

"How do you know that?"

"Because I can _read_, stupid," Leia said. Her arms were small and skinny, but she managed to gather more than her fair share of the mynocks in her grip. "Let's just get these things down the garbage shoot, and then we can just stop talking to each other."

"Aww, sweetheart, what else is there to do but talk?"

"_Don't_ call me that," Leia said, eyes narrowing rapidly. "I'm not _anyone's_ sweetheart. I'm eleven!"

"Yeah," Han said consideringly, "no one could call you sweet."

Leia aimed another kick at his shin, but he knew her well enough to know that she was predictable like that, and avoided the violence with a sharp shout of laughter.

"_Ugh_," Leia said, and dumped the mynocks into the shoot. "I don't like you."

"Don't like you either, princess."

"_Excuse_ me?! _Princess_?!"

"It suits you," he shrugged, and dropped the rest of the myocks away. "You're so small and angry."

"I'm not a princess," she muttered grumpily. "I'm _Leia Skywalker_."

"And what's that supposed to mean?"

"It means that I have better things to do than be a princess," she said, and grabbed the sleeve of his jacket to drag him back to the cockpit. It was a nice jacket—her father had, of course, insisted on actual clothes for the Big Stupid, because her father was Big Stupid, too. "Are you coming, or what?"

But Han didn't move, just looked down at her, blinking. "Who're you trying to save?"

Leia coloured bright red, sputtering. "I'm—I'm not trying to—why do _you_ care?!"

"I just wanna know," he said, shrugging as he tucked his hands away in his leather pants. Ugh, leather pants, why did he think that was a good idea, they were probably the most uncomfortable thing ever.

"I'm—we're—" Leia stopped to take a breath. "I'm just trying to save my brother."

"You have a brother?"

"A twin, according to my dad. His name's Luke," Leia said. "And my mother."

"I don't remember my mother," Han said quietly.

"To be honest," Leia said, just as quietly, "neither do I."

He was still a Big Stupid.

But at least he was a _caring_ Big Stupid.

They made it back to the cockpit in record time. The first thing that Leia noticed, though, was not the gigantic silver planet in front of them, but the way her father sat: he was tight in the shoulders, white in the knuckles, and entirely pale in the face.

"Daddy?" she hesitantly touched his arm. "Where are we?"

"This is Coruscant, kiddies," he said, almost through his teeth. "Let's get this show on the road."

—

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_tbc_.


	5. burn out stars

**disclaimer**: disclaimed.  
**dedication**: to Torie.  
**notes**: here it is, folks, the last chapter. never again am I writing multi-chapter fics for presents. NEVER. AGAIN.

**chapter title**: burn out stars  
**summary**: The Rebellion didn't start with a bang, but with a whisper. — Anakin/Padmé, Leia, Han, Luke.

—

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"I want you to be very careful, Leia," her father said in her ear as they touched down on the landing pad. "This place is…"

"Dark," Leia said simply. That made no sense, really, because Coruscant was lit up like nothing she'd ever seen. The whole _planet_ was alight; there were no dark spots where there were no people at all. It made sense, at least, why Coruscant was the capital of the Empire—there were just so many _people_ here.

But the Darkness of the place rippled across her skin. Just because Leia couldn't _manipulate_ the Force didn't mean she couldn't _feel_ it, and the Dark Side was strong on this strange bright planet.

The Big Stupid was still there, too.

"Aren't you _leaving_?" Leia asked him.

"Nope. Sorry, your Highness, but you're stuck with me!" Han grinned widely, his teeth flashing very white in the shadow of the Millennium Falcon's hull.

This was her father's doing, Leia could just _tell_. She turned to look at her father, and to see if she could kill him with her glare alone.

"I want you to be safe," Anakin sighed at her. "And if I can't—"

"I know, I know, if you can't be there, you want me to be with someone who can protect me, because you have to go find Mom, I know, I know, but can't I just go on my own? No one's going to notice a girl all alone!" Leia frantically searched her mind for any other arguments—her father would go find her mother no matter what, and she would find her brother, and they'd be a _family_ again, but that wouldn't work if the Big Stupid was there, too!

Anakin's face drew tight. "You don't know Coruscant, Leia, not like I do, and this is not up for debate. _Behave_."

"You are the worst," she said, already reaching out to wrap her arms around his waist. "Be safe, Daddy."

"You, too. I love you."

She nodded into his stomach, and then she pulled away, dry-eyed.

Leia wasn't going to cry about this. She'd cried when Grandda Lars had died, and it hadn't helped anyone _then_. It had made her feel a little better, but then, she wasn't ever going to see Grandda Lars again. She was going to see her father again, so there was no reason to cry.

"Take R2 with you," her father said. "He can get you the layout of the Senate once you're in. Leia…"

"What?"

"Don't terrorize your brother," her father, grinning, and then he was striding away, his robes flapping behind him like an oversize cavebat.

Leia pressed her lips together very tightly.

Her father was _such_ a dork.

R2 beeped inquiringly at her side. "I guess you're coming with me, buddy," she told the little droid. "I need you to help me figure this place out. Big Stupid over here is gonna be our gunslinger."

"Look at us, your Highness," Han said, "we even have nicknames for each other."

"I'd rather we didn't," Leia grumbled. "Are you coming, or not?"

"'Course," Han said, hands stuffed into his pockets. His blaster was carefully tucked into his thigh holster, and he carried himself like he'd never had anything around his neck. It was amazing what her father could do to a person, when he wanted. Leia shook her head to herself.

Leia turned, and started walking. Less than half a second later, his hand closed around her wrist.

"Leia," he said, very seriously, "just stay close, alright?"

She looked up at him warily. She wanted to wrench her wrist out of his grip, but she didn't—it was the first time he'd called her by her name.

"Okay," she said.

"Then let's go save your brother," Han said, dropped his shoulders and her wrist so that he looked exactly like the punkass teenage smuggler he was going to be.

Leia tightened everything inside of her. "Let's."

—

The Senate was frighteningly easy to sneak into. Leia tried very hard not to think about what that meant about security in this place—just because somewhere was easy to get into didn't mean it was going to be easy to get out.

It turned out that Big Stupid had a knack for getting past people without them seeing him. She figured it probably had something to do with the slavery thing—if no one saw you, no one could tell you what to do. She was also kind of glad that her father had insisted on dark clothes for all of them—the white wrap clothes would have stuck out like a sore thumb in Coruscant's streets.

Also, R2 was a godsend.

The little droid beeped and hacked his way through every door there ever was. Leia couldn't believe she'd ever thought he was useless. R2 was actually _the best_. The holocron of the Senate's blueprints was _also_ really helpful.

"He has to be here _somewhere_…" Leia muttered as she turned the holographic blueprints over and over in her hands. "This is the signacron where the file originated; he _has_ to be here—"

"There," Han said, pointed to a little room off in the very far corner of the blueprints. It looked somehow cut off from the rest of the Senate, a little _too_ out of the way for it to have been anything like a storage room, and it was too small besides. "He's probably there."

"Okay," she breathed. Leia turned the map over in her hands again. "There are two ways we can go."

"You take the long way around."

"Excuse me?" she asked him, looking upwards.

Han Solo was grinning like a maniac. "I'm gonna go cause some _trouble_, Princess. If we're lucky, they'll send all their guards towards me, and then you and—whatever the hell this thing's called—"

"R2!" Leia exclaimed right at the same moment R2 beeped indignantly. "His name is R2, don't be rude!"

"You and _R2_," Han sighed, "can get to your brother. As soon as you break through that door, you get out of here, and you go back the way you came. Catch my drift?"

Leia studied him for a moment. He had a really stupid face. "What about you?"

He grinned again, but it was a little too hard-edged, this time, for it to anything real. "Don't worry about me. I'll get out _just fine_."

"How can I trust you?" she asked him, plaintively, tired, so tired.

"You gotta believe in _something_, your Highness," he said, and dropped a hand on top of her head to mess up her hair. "Meet back at the Falcon, okay?"

"Okay," she said.

And then he was gone, too, and Leia was alone.

—

Whatever the Big Stupid was doing, it was working.

The halls were empty, but there was a blaring alarm, and every time she heard footsteps, Leia ducked down into whatever corner she could find behind R2—she was small enough that the droid hid her almost entirely, and no one ever looked at droids.

She kept her blaster in her hand, regardless.

_Bully for them_, Leia thought viciously, as she ran down another hallway. Han hadn't been kidding when he'd said that it was the long way around. Her feet hit the floor in a steady rhythm of _left-right-left-right-left-right_, the pounding a calming drug in its own right. It kept her solid, kept her focused, kept her _going_.

Every time she almost took a wrong turn, R2 beeped, and she skidded to a stop to take a look at the blueprints again. _Breathe, breathe_, she reminded herself, _you need to breathe_.

It was just so _empty_, God, she didn't even know why it was so _empty_.

If she got back to the Falcon with her blaster cartridge full, she was actually going to be _so_ annoyed. Her father would probably be happy, though.

Stupid Han. Big Stupid Han.

And then she was running again, taking off down the hall in the right direction.

There was a droid rounding the corner. Leia didn't even aim, she just shot, _bang_, and kept running. Droid parts scattered around her while R2 behind made a happy trilling noise that sounded like victory. Leia grinned to herself, and then promptly realized she had no idea where she was.

"R2, are we far, now?"

The droid beeped happily again, brought up the blueprints again without complaint.

Her brother may or may not have been _literally down the hall_.

Leia steeled herself against the possible disappointment. If he wasn't there, well, she'd just go grab Big Stupid and get out of there, and then they'd keep looking. He thought she was stuck with him? _Ha_, he was going to _hate_ her by the end of this mission. Once they hit the Falcon, she was going to stick to him like _glue_.

(See how _he_ liked it.)

The door was right at the end of the hall, painted the exact same colour as the wall surrounding it, with no visible entry point.

"R2?" Leia asked.

The droid beeped once, and went to work.

A minute later, there was a _hiss_ as the door slid open. Leia threw herself into it, hands burning a little against the heated metal, and looked inside.

There was the boy with the shaggy light hair and the blue eyes.

_Victory_.

He looked up, eyes wide.

"Hi!" she said. "I'm Leia Skywalker, and I'm here to rescue you!"

—

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_fin_.


End file.
